The Racing Trader Review

[review]

Product Name: Racing Trader – Trading And Betting UK And Australian Racing

Author:  Tony Hargraves

Contact Details: http://thesportstrader.com/contact-us/

Price: £59.99

Money Back Guarantee: None offered

What Do You Get? An e-book which outlines a number of successful trading strategies which also contains videos to show real life trades by the author.

Where To Buy: http://www.raceadvisor.co.uk/s/thesportstrader/

Brief Summary:  Racing Trader – Trading And Betting UK And Australian Racing is an e-book which contains multiple strategies for successful trading that will take time to learn but can be used on any race worldwide on a daily basis

How Much Money Do I Need To Get Started? A maximumbet of 5% is recommended by the author meaning a minimum of 20 units

How Much Money Can I Make?  I will need to do some trading to calculate this

How Much Time Will I Need To Make This Work? This depends on which strategy you decide to use but the majority require you to be at your computer, without any distractions just before the start of each race and some strategies require you to go in play.

Will I Need Any Equipment To Do This? You must have Betfair account and access to BetTrader Evolution to make this work [divider]

When you purchase the e-book you are supplied with a pdf file which details a wide number of trading strategies as well as video links of real life situations where each strategy is used. There is also link to where you can download the BetTrader Evolution software which is used on all the strategies listed in the book. BetTrader Evolution will only work on Windows but you can install it on a Mac if you have Virtual Windows running without any problem.

This e-book is more than just a simple system as there is a variety of strategies used and each has their own levels of risk and reward.

The reader will not be able to read the book once then dive straight in and begin trading with real confidence but you will begin to understand how and why the strategies used do work which, in my opinion, is worth a great deal more than a few simple rules.

This book highlights how to spot a potential trading opportunity and how to go about closing the trade to guarantee profit or earn a free bet if your selection loses, but maximise profits if it wins. It also describes which situation would be best to implement depending on the circumstances.

There really is a great deal of very useful information with plenty of videos which provide a great insight to what you should be seeing.

At first these videos can be a little daunting due to the speed of which you need to get in and out of the market but after reading the strategies twice, then watching the videos twice, things start becoming a lot clearer and you can begin to see how easy it can be when you know what to look out for.

Of course it isn’t always this easy and when it does go wrong there are is also valuable information on how to minimise the losses and even cancel out all losses by keeping well-disciplined and following a few simple steps.

This book does contain everything you need to know to trade successfully but it also admits that it can’t teach you discipline and patience, although there are constant reminders that it is required to become a successful trader.

There are a several strategies where the trade must be closed before the start of the race and each of these has varying levels of risk and reward. There are also a number of in play strategies which are more risky but could have a bigger reward. It really is up to the reader to decide which strategy best suits their personality but once you have mastered one, the information is there to progress onto the next.

As well as clearly detailing all the trading strategies this guide provides a basic tuition on how to use BetTrader Evoultion and utilise the features it has in order to make trading more efficient and use the safeguards just in the case it does go wrong. The software is free, although for £10 per month you can upgrade to the enhanced version, and it also has a training mode which means you can try your hand at all the strategy to find which one suits your personality without the risk of losing any of your hard earned cash.

So what strategies will I be implementing?

As a novice trader I will be trying to keep my risk to a minimum and will start with £200 in my training bank and will look at placing a £10 back bet followed by a hedged lay bet at 2 tick points lower than I backed and that trade is then complete.

If I believe the price will rise I will accept a £10 lay followed by a hedged back bets and this will guarantee a small profit.

This will only give a 2 tick profit but as my knowledge and level of confidence increases I will close my trade at 3 tick points.

All of these trades will be done using the top 4 horses in the betting as this is where most of the money will be and each trade will be closed before the start of the race. If the market swings in the wrong direction I will accept a 3 tick loss and try to spot how the market is balancing itself out to try and reduce the effect of the loss.

I hope this will produce a really high strike rate but I don’t expect a great return on investment (ROI). I will be looking to make as many trades as possible per race so although the ROI will not be great on a single trade, a decent profit could be made by executing 4 or 5 trades per race, and I will try to cover as many races as I can, but will take a break every 3 races for 10 or 15 minutes.

I will also be using a strategy called laying the field where I will place a lay bet of 1.70 on every runner in competitive handicap sprint races where there are more than 8 runners. I will do some basic form study to make sure these races are competitive enough so not every big field handicap will use this strategy.

This is a strategy utilises the in play market and if 2 bets get matched I have guaranteed my profit for the race and if 3 get matched I will be jumping for joy. If the race is not competitive enough I may only match the winner which will result in a loss and as it is in play there will be no time to minimise this loss and that is where the risk lies.

Summary

After the 60 days trial period of The Racing Trader I can say that it has been hard work with plenty of tense moments but the bottom line is that it has also been profitable and worth the work. I used 2 strategies from The Racing Traders where I was looking out for potential market moves within the last 10 minutes before the start of the race where I would make a low risk 2 tick trade and the other was to lay the field at 1.75 in 5 and 6 furlong handicaps with more than 8 runners and hope it is competitive enough to get 2 runners get matched in running.

I began my trading using £10 stakes and stuck to 2 tick trades, but the stake size increased as I began to get more confident. I finally increased the stake size to £20 / £40.

Over the 60 days I did 399 trades and 319 of these were profitable, giving an 80% strike rate. However the average profit made from these winning trades was only £0.96 with the maximum made in a single trade being £4.71.

All this sounds great so far, but when I looked at the losing trades I can see that the average loss for the loosing trades was £2.31 and the maximum loss I took on a single trade was £10. So it is critical that the strike rate is as high as it is.

The market can move so fast that even when you plan out when you’re going to take your loss one large bet can cause a 3 tick move and you’re forced to take a 6 tick loss instead of the planned 3 tick stop loss.

The total profit from this strategy was £133.92, after Betfair commission, so these losses were overshadowed by the shear amount of winning trades.

Most of my trades were closed with about 2 minutes before the off and most of the time there was a great relief knowing that you have the profit in the bag as the screen shows all the last minute movers.

On the occasions I still had a trade open at this time I began to feel the nerves as I knew this is the last chance for it to go my way. When it does go your way you can rest easy knowing you have your profit (while you let your heart rate calm down) or you swallow your pride and accept the loss before it goes in play and hope you made enough winning trades to still profit from the race.

This is where the real thrill in the trading was and it was easy to lose interest in who’s actually winning because it didn’t really matter.

Despite this I can’t argue with the figures and I can say that by using the details in The Racing Trader I have managed to be able to consistently spot when to enter the markets to provide a small profit at a reasonably low risk.

At first I was a little apprehensive about the Laying The Field strategy as I wanted to ensure the race was going to be competitive before I placed my bets.

As I watched the fast moving in play markets I could see that 2 runners trading less than 1.75 happened quite regularly and gave me the confidence to place some bets.

In total I used this strategy in 26 races where it provided a profit in 80% of those races. 5 races had only 1 matched bet which lost £7.50 a time, 19 of the races had 2 matched bets and won £2.50 a time and 2 races had 3 matched bets which won £12.50 a time.

This means at £10 stakes I made a profit of £31.38 after Betfair commission and a ROI of 16%. These results are really quite remarkable and I am kicking myself for not trialing this from the very start of the review as it is very easy to search for races and place the bets.

Two things worth noting are that, because of the way Betfair holds the money, it only cost £7.50 per race and not £7.50 per horse and if there are any non-runners after you have placed your bets then the priced will be reduced due to the reduction factor that Betfair employ. As long as the handicapper keeps these races competitive I can’t see any reason why this technique could stop being profitable in the future.

In total, both strategies provided a total profit of £165.30 after Betfair commission and the cost for the BetTrader software was £20 over the 60 days.

The amount of profit is very respectable considering I didn’t have any previous experience of being a trader. If you are a novice and have no idea where to begin in order to become a successful trader then this book will give you a detailed guide about where to start and the cost of the book can be recuperated and profits made within a couple of months of hard work (I say hard work but it is more like hard concentrating which does wear you out).

I only trialed two of the many strategies in The Racing Trader and they have both been profitable and easy to implement. I have no doubt that it can do the same for you, provided you have the discipline and willing to become a trader. There are plenty more strategies each with their own levels of risk and reward and even experienced traders will find something they can use from The Racing Trader.

[review]